Poets well versed in the art of combat
Sameer Rahim on the traditional infighting between poetic rivals.
We all know about famous poetic friendships — Wordsworth and Coleridge, Eliot
and Pound — but an equally strong tradition in English literature has been the
poetic feud. In the 18th century Alexander Pope mocked the banal rhymes of his
rivals: “Wher’er you find 'the cooling western breeze’, / In the next line, it
'whispers through the trees’.” The Romantics were no friendlier: Byron wrote of
“Johnny Keats’ piss-a-bed poetry”.
Modern poets seem to be doing their best to keep up. After months of
acrimony, the Poetry Society brouhaha seems finally to have been laid to rest
this week with the resignation of Fiona Sampson, a poet who had edited the
society’s magazine. She had been in dispute with the director of the society,
Judith Palmer, who resigned in July.
Explanations for the dispute’s origins range from a disagreement over where
their £360,000 funding from the Arts Council should be spent, or just that
Sampson and Palmer didn’t get on. “I have not picked a fight with Judith
Palmer,” Sampson has said, “and I’m not interested in picking a fight.”
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